Angelo State University Herbarium

The Angelo State University Herbarium can provide a unique contribution to the digital flora resulting from the proposed project. The primary emphasis of the some 40,000 vascular plant specimens housed in the collection is the Concho Valley (Tom Green County and surrounding counties), a region representing an important ecotone of the Edwards Plateau, Rolling Plains, and Trans-Pecos. Because of the remote location, this region has been, at best, infrequently collected by other botanists. ASU specimens are rarely found as duplicates in other Texas herbaria since many of the specimens are collected by plant taxonomy students who have access to private ranches in the area. Since the herbarium was started in 1972, ASU botanists have been involved in floristic surveys of several protected areas, including Dolan Springs, Big Bend National Park, and the Texas Nature Conservancy Independence Creek and Big Brushy Canyon. ASU botanists have also conducted investigations on several little known Texas plants, including the endangered Texas poppy mallow, the threatened Chisos hedgehog cactus, and the rare big-pod bonamia and Chisos pinweed. Voucher specimens from these studies are housed in the ASU Herbarium.

The ASU herbarium and ASU personnel will greatly benefit from the collaboration proposed with the other five institutions. Although there are many advantages of small regional universities, one disadvantage, for both faculty and students, is the isolation from other scientists, which is exacerbated at ASU because of its rural location. Biological disciplines, such as botany, are typically represented by a single faculty member. This limits intellectual discourse for faculty and narrows academic perspectives for students. The collaboration will provide numerous opportunities for exchange of ideas and allow ASU botanists to actively work beyond our local environment.

Center for the Study of Digital Libraries - Texas Engineering Extension Service
http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/

The Center for the Study of Digital Libraries (CSDL) occupies 12 offices and two laboratories on the main campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, as well as an office at the Institute of Biosciences and technology in Houston, Texas. The Center's conference room is equipped with ATM networking for distance education applications. Established in 1995 by The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, the CSDL builds upon research developed in the Hypermedia Research Laboratory established in 1987. A member of the global digital library research community, the Center provides a focal point for digital libraries research and technology for the State of Texas. Its mission is to foster pioneering research on the theory and application of digital libraries and to create flexible and efficient new technologies for their use.

Digital libraries will be ubiquitous in the future and will provide the basis for a very broad set of distributed living activities including computer-supported cooperative work, distance learning, electronic commerce and entertainment. The transition to an electronic information workplace has already begun in full force. We believe that digital libraries will significantly impact the quality of education and, indeed, the quality of life over the next decade. With support from the Texas A&M Interdisciplinary Research Grants Program, CSDL faculty and students have been working with biological collections managers on the Texas A&M campus, and their collaborators, since 1995.

The S. M. Tracy Herbarium - Texas Agricultural Experiment Station
http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/taes/tracy/home.html

The Tracy Herbarium came into being in the early 1930's based on early collections of several individuals, including the outstanding botanist-agriculturist, S. M. Tracy, for whom the herbarium is named. Specimens in the herbarium currently total over 200,000 making it the third largest in the state. In 1974 the Tracy Herbarium was listed as one of 105 herbaria in the U. S. designated as National Resource Collections out of a total of 1,127 U. S. herbaria. The designation was based on the importance of the large collection of grasses that resides in the herbarium.

The present inventory includes not only Texas plants, but also a sampling of plants from other parts of the world. The grass collection, possibly the finest in the state, now numbers about 70,000 sheets, including 15,000 specimens from Mexico, and Caribbean, and Central America.
 

Digital Biodiversity - The Flora of Texas Project (010366-0041-1999) - Additional Materials Page 7